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August 24, 2005

the thing with books

a long time ago, in the salad days of my relationship with boingboing, back when we held hands and sang "tra-la-la" whilst skipping through fields of daisies, when xeni wasn't even a sidebar, much less an editor, a very long time ago indeed...

i thought it was awfully cool that one of the boingboing editors, one of the folks who did that cool blog read by all the people in the know and on the cutting edge, actually published a book. it was called "down and out in the magic kingdom", and eventually, i read it.

it was awful. it made me angry that it was printed. i very rarely have the response, "oh, i could do better," but in this case, i did. the characters were flat and the whole thing was just student grade writing, a vehicle for a set of hip ideas that this guy should have written up as non-fiction. blog entries, maybe.

time passed, my anger faded. i decided to try his other books. i bought them last month for vacation reading: "eastern standard tribe", and "someone comes to town, someone leaves town".

"eastern standard tribe" angered me just as much as the first one. i actually dogeared examples of crappy writing so i could do a proper critique. well, one example:

"Art bought a stale, sterno-reeking pretzel that was crusted with inedible volumes of yellowing salt, and squirted a couple bucks at a panhandler who had been pestering him in thick Jamaican patois but thanked him in adenoidal Brooklynese."

squirted??? ok, i can appreciate an expressive verb. i once read a short story that contained the phrase: "...she snatched a comb through her hair..." and i thought that was brilliant. snatched is perfect– you understand her mood just by that one verb. squirted... fails to acheive a similar effect here. it buys you nothing. and it clearly replaces not a single adjective.

and the whole damn thing is like that.

so reluctantly, i pushed onward to the third novel, a proper novel this time, not a novella in large font, and within the first paragraph i knew that Cory Doctorow had grown up as a writer and this was a real book, a good piece of writing, not student work at all.

The transformation is stunning. I don't know if he just grew, or got a decent editor, or if it's the first book he's written while not holding down another paying job, but it's like a different writer is writing.

The difficulty for me, as a reader, is that this book is quite horrifying. It reminds me a little bit too much of one of the reasons I stopped reading fiction almost completely several years ago– a book that made me want to read less.

I was on a bit of an Orson Scott Card kick– I liked his sci-fi. I didn't know he also wrote horror novels. One day I was plundering the Nice Price sci-fi section and ran across a Card book called "The Lost Boys". It was some kind of pre-market paperback-- a promo copy, without the kind of summary on the back cover that would normally tell a reader what kind of book it was. So I bought it, and I read it.

That book still gives me the creeps. It was one of his horror novels, and it took me a good while to realize where the story was going-- I was expecting sci-fi.

I think my reading habit dropped off a lot after I read that book. It was just... awful. shudder.

Well, "Someone comes to town, Someone leaves town" reminds me of "Lost Boys". Not quite as creepy, but I was unprepared for one of the main characters to be an intelligent, evil zombie. Don't get me wrong, I still think zombies can be PURE. COMEDY. GOLD. But not this one. I think only dumb zombies are funny.

But dammit– I want to keep reading, I want to find out what happens. Just please, please don't damage my psyche in the process! Please don't make it even harder for me to fall asleep.

Damn you Cory Doctorow!!! Why did you have to finally write a book worth reading?

Posted by lisa at August 24, 2005 10:47 PM

Comments

I think "squirted" is supposed to impose a dislocation on the reader; in this instance, one's probably supposed to resolve the dislocation by realizing that the transfer of money wasn't physical -- I assume some sort of tight beam. I found use of the term in, of all places, an online copy of William Gibson's short story "Burning Chrome":

http://www.american-buddha.com/burnchrome2.htm

(Gotta sign up to read it, unfortunately.)

But I think I'm probably preaching to the choir here...

Posted by: Joseph H. Vilas on August 24, 2005 11:23 PM

you may be correct that it was supposed to indicate electronic transfer.

nevertheless, the book still sucks.

Posted by: lisa on August 24, 2005 11:42 PM

I'm amazed that you bought books #2 and #3 after #1 sucked so bad. I would never be that generous. I use the library to get books for which I don't want to give the author money, or Amazon Marketplace if the library doesn't have it.

Posted by: Sarah on August 25, 2005 07:21 AM

i'm not sure why i did buy them. it was a last-minute thing before my trip; i knew i wanted stuff to read, and had been meaning to read these books. i think i had also forgotten that the first one pissed me off. and at the end of the day, i don't really mind supporting someone who is writing for a living, especially books that ARE cool, even if they aren't good writing. it's not like i'm buying hallmark cards and supporting the hacks who write THOSE.

historically, i can't be trusted with a library card, so i don't allow myself to have one. but i'm probably a lot more responsible now than i was back when i last had one.

Posted by: lisa on August 25, 2005 09:22 AM

The library is way easier now than it used to be, or at least ours is. I can locate books on their website and hold them, and even have them sent to the branch nearest me, where I run in and pick them up in less than 3 minutes. I get an e-mail reminding me when they're due, and I can renew them online before they become overdue. Awesome. I can also look up and pay any fines online, too.

Posted by: Steph Mineart on August 25, 2005 01:47 PM

my problem with libraries isn't that they weren't easy enough to use. more like, they were too easy to abuse.

i've been known to keep library books out for a decade. or more.

i wish i could have seen the librarian's face when she checked in that book on Shakers that i returned after keeping it out since i dunno when.

anyway, i never got a library card in durham, cause i didn't want to be keeping things out for years at a time.

i have many fond library memories, however. perhaps i should write them up as a blog entry.

Posted by: lisa on August 25, 2005 06:43 PM

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